Texturing

I started the diffuse texturing process in Photoshop with the AO map in Multiply. Underneath this I proceeded layering the base color, metal textures, yellows and gray details, some blue glows, rusted damage and so on. I created the Specular map from the Diffuse. Fig.17 shows one section of the texture sheet. One important thing is that I worked with the scratches masked in an empty layer. This fact made it easier for me to change their color, brightness and blend mode.

Fig. 17

Lighting

The last steps were the shading and lighting settings. After lots of tests with different shades, we found the one which worked the best for the final result we wanted.
The same was true for lighting; it involved a lot of trial and error until we finally got the results we wanted. We used one Dome VRayLight with the chosen HDRI, one Key light and some fill lights with different colors for some nice changes (Fig.18). Again, remember to always make sure you have Gamma Correction and V-Ray Frame Buffer enabled to get better results.

Fig. 18

With all these settings and the indirect illumination established, we finished out with the final render which I brought into Photoshop for extra touches and, lastly, the final composition (Fig.19).

Fig. 19

His back looks like the following image (Fig.20).

Fig. 20

Conclusion

This robot was a real challenge, mainly because he has around 40 pieces that I had to individually create, detail, decimate, make the topology for and project. It was a long and hard process but at the end we finished successfully with a model which is actually ready for animation. And currently I just finished the game mesh of him.

I hope this Making Of has been useful to you all and thank you very much for having taken the time to read it.

(ID: 207747, pid: 0) Nacho Hm on Fri, 19 July 2013 1:12pm Great work right here, i suppose is nice to come up with a design and be able to take to this cool 3d robot!! hehe,
thanks for share this great and easy to follow tutorial, very helpful.
Keep it up!!
Nacho.